Program Overview

The Creativity Workshop in Dubai will help you become more creative in your personal and professional life; the creativity training we provide uses the tools of creative writing, memoir,
art, photography, storytelling, mapmaking, and guided visualization.

Participants come from many different countries and professional fields, including business, education, psychology, the sciences, and the arts.

Many people who have taken the Workshop say that it was a transformative experience, helping them to write their books, start new companies, complete long overdue projects, transition to rewarding retirements, and change the way they look at life.

Program Details

The Creativity Workshop in Dubai meets for 3 days, 4 hours per day (from 9 AM to 1 PM). You will have the rest of the time to sightsee.

Class will take place in Dubai’s Marina district at Marina Byblos Hotel, just a 5-minute walk from Jumeirah Beach.

Why Dubai?

This vibrant international city is a place of dynamic contrasts, where luxurious ultramodern malls, ancient marketplaces, pristine beaches, and vast deserts live side by side.

Opportunities for inspiration and discovery abound, whether you use your free time to visit traditional local handcrafters in nearby Sharjah, have a moonlight picnic in the desert, hunt
for bargains in the local antiques and gold markets, or go skiing on the world’s tallest indoor ski slope.

The techniques we explore in this course will sharpen your appreciation of Dubai and its surroundings, and the sounds and sights of this fascinating city will surely feed your creative
work in class. For those attendees who are from Dubai, our creativity exercises will help you look at the city and your surroundings in a whole new way.

What Will You Learn?

The Creativity Workshop is an experiential workshop of doing and experimenting. Our exercises and instructors’ talks focus on helping you:

Guided Visualization: Mapmaking as a way to find, chart, and communicate your creative process and projects.

Automatic/Free Writing: How automatic writing
(also known as “free writing”) can help you
create in new and surprising ways. How you can use automatic
writing to outrunyour inner judge, get over creative
blocks, and discover new ways of developing and editing
written work. How alternating between writing and drawing
canhelp you develop creative flexibility and mental dexterity.Miniature Theatre: Storytelling with
found objects.

The Interview:

Instructors’ talks may include:

How to do ongoing creative work in short modules
of time.

How to use luck and coincidence to jump-start creative
projects.

Saturday, December 5

Guided visualization: Letter writing as a way to express voice, character, and audience.

Automatic Writing: Writing in Groups. How writing and/or drawing with others can stimulate your imagination and expand your point of view.

Guided visualization: The Myth of the Other. Imagining yourself living a parallel life. What would you do that you aren’t doing now?

“I only wish that people could experience what you have to offer. You gave me a feeling a freedom that I NEVER felt before. Shelley and Alejandro have a great gift to share with others. They give of themselves in a way that is incredibly beautiful. Thank you for touching my soul, for helping me soar!”

Dianne Stuckey, Teacher, American School of Dubai, United Arab Emirates